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Dept of Electronic Engineering named best in Europe

Electronic Engineering at Surrey has been given the ultimate seal of approval with the ELEKTRA University Department of the Year award 2013.

The University of Surrey was presented with the highly coveted ELEKTRA award on 27 November at a black-tie awards ceremony held at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel. The high point of the year for the European electronics industry, the annual ELEKTRA awards see the industry come together to showcase the finest new products, technological innovation and company performances of the year.

Surrey was judged against Europe’s highest performing universities across a range of criteria including academic success rate, research and teaching innovation, joint industry projects and international collaboration.

While the University’s Department of Electronic Engineering impressed judges across the board, there were two factors that particularly singled it out. These were the award of the £35m grant by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and corporate investors for the 5G Innovation Centre (the world’s first research centre dedicated to the next generation of mobile phone technology), and the award of a rare Regius Chair to the Department by the Queen.

The University Department of the Year award was one of three ELEKTRA ‘Engineers of the Future’ awards, designed to recognise and support talented young engineers – who will be vital to the future of the industry – and the educational departments that teach them. These were presented, along with a series of business and product honours, at a glamorous awards ceremony which saw 400 industry figures gathering to celebrate achievements and best practices over the past year.

Professor Josef Kittler, Head of Surrey’s Department of Electronic Engineering, commented: “Our aim is to be the top Electronic Engineering Department, both in the UK and internationally. We are proud to have won the ELEKTRA award in the University Department of the Year category because it provides external recognition of Surrey’s achievements in research and teaching, as well as placing us in the spotlight of the European Electronics Industry, which will help us to strengthen our relationship with industry even further."

The largest department at the University of Surrey, the Department of Electronic Engineering was ranked at number two among UK universities in the Guardian University Guide 2014 and at number four in The Complete University Guide 2014. The Department has four research centres, which are each at the forefront of international research in their specialist fields: the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI), Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR), Centre for Vision, Speech & Signal Processing (CVSSP) and Surrey Space Centre (SSC).